Need for marketing Information System

Kishore C.S. (Dec 1999)

Marketing feedback is important for any organization. Changing customer needs, evolving technology trends, increasing competition necessitate the need to process market feedback and communicate to other departments of the organization. Currently very few information systems provide a features needed by a marketing department. Enterprise applications focus on functions like sales, production, purchase, and inventory. But market information is becoming crucial. This document hints at conceptual framework that marketing information system. Such a system can be very useful to any organization.

Top Management is interested in knowing the following from marketing department:

1. How much was our marketing budget and what is the actual expenditure?
2. Towards which type of marketing maximum budget was spent? What should be future marketing budget?
3. How many prospects contacted our marketing department and how many prospects materialized finally?
4. What is the market feedback about current quality, technology, and price of the product? What strategy should be adopted to improve the same?
5. How effective is our communication with prospects?
6. What is the future potential of the market?
7. What trends are happening in market which should change our product strategy?

Typically all this information is available with Marketing department which needs to be processed and passed on to top management. Besides this the marketing department also needs effective information system to manage their own functions.

The following are the needs of marketing department

1. What are the future marketing events the company can participate in? What are the events in which the company participated?
2. How effective are our current marketing efforts? What are the areas of improvement? Which marketing type can be taken up new or which can be discontinued?
3. What are the pending ‘prospects’ that can be followed up?
4. What are the various communications sent to the prospect and what is the status of the prospect?
5. What are the various marketing materials available and how effective are they?
6. What is the number of inquiries received in last few months for each product? Which product needs more marketing efforts?
7. What are the pending demos: who is doing what?
8. Who is the contact person(s) for each prospect?

Typical Processes that may be captured by Marketing Information System

Example 1:

1. A Prospect sends an e-mail to marketing department asking for more information on a product.
2. The person who receives the mail logs information about the prospect into the system
3. Sends relevant information to the prospect
4. In Information system mark a follow-up activity for the prospect at a future date and responsibility also.
5. Transfer queries by prospect into repository (Product – Question – Category). Others can use this in future.

Example 2:

Someone in marketing department comes to know of an exhibition that focuses on the market segment the company is in.

1. The marketing person logs the information in the repository
2. Similar events can be queried and see the effectiveness of participation in such events.
3. Plan and participate in the event
4. If stall is put up in the exhibition and lot of prospects turned up – log the complete information into repository.